


Snowwhite and the Seven Days of Doom

by nitamar



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-05
Updated: 2015-07-05
Packaged: 2018-04-07 19:14:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4274823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nitamar/pseuds/nitamar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor drifts to sleep as he listens to his favourite story while relaxing in the TARDIS swimming pool. And Sexy visits him in his dream, to remind him of the one things that's most important.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Snowwhite and the Seven Days of Doom

**Author's Note:**

> No, this is not the actual fairy tale. Although it contains it. I wrote this a couple of years ago... after Journey to the Center of the TARDIS, I think. I thought it was too random at the time so I didn't share it.

Theta sheds his clothes and dips into the swimming pool. Sexy purrs as the clear blue water supports his weight. And Theta rests with his arms spread on the perfect marble. He gives out a sigh of pure bliss and smiles rather smugly.

He is not quite sure what happened, or rather, unhappened, but he must have done something incredibly clever and saved the day.

"What do you reckon old girl?" Theta plays with the water, cool on his skin, with his leg, sending wrinkles across the surface of the pool. The light shivered and shimmered, reminding him of the beach on the north pole of the seventh planet of Orion. She responses by making gentle tides of waves in the pool. They splashes against his body on gush after another, caressing his body, relaxing places he doesn't know he's tensing. 

Theta sighs again, contently. He turns, and with one hand takes out the put on a tiny glass bottle.

An ancient female voice fills the swimming pool immediately. Soothing and calm. This is the voice of one of Gallifrey's most famous story-tellers. Almost every young time lord went to sleep listening to her. And for this occasion Theta has chosen one of his old favourites, Snowwhite and the Seven Days of Doom.

It is impossible to count how many times he has listened to it. The story starts with the time lady Snowwhite's TARDIS taken over by an unseen force, dragged out of the vortex and landed on an impossible planet that had eleven blazing suns. Everytime she got out of doom using her poise and wit. But only to find some greater danger loomed behind. Until finally, on the seventh day, Snowwhite destroyed the force that had been messing with the Vortex, saving time itself, and returned to Gallifrey, never telling anyone her adventures and how she had saved them all.

Theta is familiar with every word of the story, every syllable, every pause for breath. The wave rocks his body gently, like when he was a tiny little thing sleeping in his cot, unknowingly letting its fabric interwine itself with his hearts and soul, making him who he is.

  


In his dreams he is running, under the shining red sky, laughing and jumping occationally to reach the floating wind. And his mother is calling him, "Hey it's time for dinner. Come back!"

He shouted, his little body turned slightly towards the direction of his mother, "Five more minutes mum! I'm coming!" 

From the other side of the meadow his friends are calling him, "Theta! See you after dinner!" And he turns back to wave at them...

In the TARDIS the Doctor tossed in the swimming pool. Just as his arm is about to hit cold, hard marble, Sexy gently, with a puff of golden sparkle, gives it a soft landing. His arm bounces slightly on thin air, As though a tiny limb hit the freshly dewed grass as the body of its owner falls to the ground, gasping for breath, but still laughing, under a golden-leaved tree.

A woman appears beside him, seemingly out of nowhere. But that is not unusual on Gallifrey. She is wearing a beautiful blue dress. The sun is in his eyes so he can't see her face clearly.

The woman kneels down beside him and puts her hand on his cheek, cool and soft. Theta stops laughing. He looks at her, squints, and smiles his most brilliant smile. "Evening, lady." He says.

The lady doesn't reply his greeting. She just strokes his cheek and murmurs, "Look at you. So young and happy."

A cloud flies past the sun, and for a moment Theta can see her face properly. He's surprised to find her beautiful blue eyes swimming with tears.

"Are you alright, lady?" Theta sits up and takes her hand in his. 

But the woman just smiles despite her grief and whispered, instead of an answer, "Are you?"

Theta bites his lip, his joy forgotten

"No," he says, hanging his head. "No, actually not. I'll have to look into the vortex next week. And I'm so worried."

"Are you afraid?" asks the woman.

"No! Not afraid." Theta says with an indignant huff. "Just worried."

"What is to be worried about if you are not afriad?" The woman asks him with a smile on her lips.

Theta looks up at the burning sky, sighs and looks back into the pair of beautiful blue eyes.

"Because..." he looks around to check if there's anyone else there, then says quietly, "because what if I looked and could see the meaning of the universe?"

"Is that not a good thing?"

"No! Then I'll have to stay here forever and be a scientist!" 

He sits up, his voice all passionate, but still kept low-

"I don't want to! I want to go out there, see all the worlds, explore the universes."

Then he sighs again, all his energy gone in a flash.

"But that's difficult. And I can't see a way out of here yet." He says sadly.

"Well, if you really want to go, no one can stop you." The lady says. She is so nice Theta feels he has known her for thousands of years.

"That's true." Theta says, playing with his fingers, knotting them together and spreading them again. "But..." Theta hesitated. This is his greatest fear, the one he hides deep in the bottom of his hearts. And he's not sure how they'd sound like out in the sunlight.

The lady just smiles, patiently, encouragingly, understandingly.

"But what if I forgot? What if I looked into the vortex, and the force of it took over my brain and all I could think was sciency stuff and was not myself anymore? What if I forgot my dreams and became a boring scientist?"

"Oh but scientists are not all boring. There are cool scientists too. And you get to save a lot of people just by staying inside the laboratory."

"But I don't want to!" Theta is on the verge of tears. "What's the fun in saving the universe if you don't have a chance to step onto the planet, smell its air, taste its food, learn its language, befriend the people? A scientist doesn't even get to know who they are saving! It's the boringest thing in the world!"

The lady laughs, making Theta confused.

"So, by what you just said, I assume you like saving people, but just not from a laboratory?" She asks, which is a very strange thing to ask, and very much not to the point. 

"I... I've not really thought about it." Theta says, after frowning his pretty eyebrows for a while.

"Because," it's as if the lady can read his thoughts,"Once you go out to the universe, you will see that it's not all peaceful and flourishing. Somewhere there's danger, somewhere there's injustice, and somewhere else the tea is getting cold... Once you decide to sail out, you'll find yourself in the depth of things. Will you brace whatever comes, getting away by the scrape of your neck, making friends all along, or will you dash back into your TARDIS and run away at the first sign of danger?"

Theta  nibs at his thumb, thinking about it. "No, of course not!" He announced, finally. "Whenever I see danger in another world, I will try my utmost best to save the people; seek harmony in conflicts; restore peace if I can."

The golden sunlight shines on the leaves and reflects in his eyes like stars in the vast dark blueness of the universe.

"But it won't be that easy, Theta. Nothing is that easy. And sometimes you won't succeed." The lady says.

Theta looks down. "But I will try my best." He murmurs. "Very, very best."

The lady ruffles his hair. And Theta looks up again. The typical stubborness of a young man written all over his face. "That way I will have no regrets because I couldn't have done it any other way, or any better."

"I'm so proud of you." The lady says. 

"Who are you?" Theta asks. He's starting to feel a little dizzy. The light's becoming too dazzling and his legs feel weak. The solidness of the ground underneath him starts to slip away.

"Just remember, my darling. Remember. Remember what you said..." He can hear a voice say...

Theta kicks in his dream and he's wide awake.

  


"Have I fallen asleep?" he asks the TARDIS. It's starting to get cold, so he clambered out.

As he put the story bottle back to the library, he feels a spring in his legs, a feeling he hasn't had in a couple hundred years. 

There's something in the back of his head that he know he should remember, but he can't put his finger on it. Not yet. It will come to him, no worries.

Theta hums to himself as he runs his fingers along a row of books, looking for something light to read for the night. 

It always comes to him. Always.


End file.
